Activity for Lauren Ipsum
| Type | On... | Excerpt | Status | Date |
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A: How to write a homosexual character, whose homosexuality isn't the point of the story? > I wanna write modern fantasy that just happened to have a lesbian character. So, do that. When the love interest enters the scene, your protagonist is interested. That's all. That's what you'd do with a straight character. Don't overthink it, don't have her come out with fireworks or tears, just ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Is it good/bad/neutral to introduce a character's day to day life if it's immediately going to be drastically changed? In the Hero's Journey, this is called The Ordinary World, and it's important to establish. The Ordinary World is what the Hero must leave to go on the Journey. This World may be good or bad, whole or broken, the desired status quo or something which needs to be fixed, but it's where the Hero starts.... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How to help reader visualize the environment in a story? If the character is narrating his story to the reader, then he's speaking to the reader, so that problem is solved. If he doesn't know where he is, then he has to figure it out from what he can take in through his senses, which he's going to describe to the reader. > I woke up slowly. It was dark, ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: My Conflict Doesn't End at the Climax. What can I do? When your givens are a problem, change your givens. Your protagonist wants to get Ms. X out of the building alive. He may find her, but they both still have to get out alive. So: - Is she wounded? Did the bad guys shoot her or cut her up? Is she having seizures or does she urgently need medication?... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: I'm unable to figure out the logical solution to a problem; how do I keep writing? > but the story involves an enemy who can perfectly anticipate your moves. This happened more than once on Leverage (a totally fun Robin Hood heist-of-the-week show; I highly recommend it). The Leverage crew is made of five bad guys who have gone good and run cons to benefit people. Unfortunately, a... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Allowing people to edit/proofcheck my posts on wordpress.com If you have a WordPress site, you should be able to create various users who have different levels of permission. Give your two or three trusted friends their own usernames with Admin or Editor permissions, and those people should be able to log in and edit your posts. (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Should I describe my characters going to the toilet? Like anything else, if it's critical to the plot, or if it would be very weird to leave it out, then put it in. If it's unnecessary or there's enough passage of time offscreen to cover it, leave it out. - If it's a hostage situation, everyone involved is going to be tense and focused for hours. The ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Term for stereotype stories If you're referring to older, unsophisticated stories, where the author was being quite straightforward, then "clichéd" is probably what you want. (Plain old unsophisticated works too, or broad or simplistic.) If you're referring to current stories, or your own, where you're aware of such stereotype... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Writing backwards What you are describing is being a discovery writer, also called a pantser (as in "by the seat of your pants"). The purpose of an outline is to establish a coherent linear structure for your story, so all the plotlines work all the way through. If you just write your entire story first, and then rev... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Writing productivity trackers You can try my old buddy Scrivener. I don't use even a quarter of the bells and whistles I know are there, so hunt around the documentation and see if it's useful. I know it at least has a Goal function so you can set a word count goal to meet, and keeps track in the footer. Inexpensive program, you... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How to write an elevator speech for MYSELF? When you're looking for a job, you have (a) your skills, which is what you offer the company, and (b) your professional desires, which is what the company offers you. Examples: - A graphic designer who (a) can work in print and on the web wants to (b) get more experience in creating responsive websi... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Gratuitous use of magic: poor writing and/or unenjoyable? The main way to make magic "not annoying" it to make sure it follows the rules of magical physics, if you will. Magical acts require energy (fuel). The energy has to come from somewhere to be expended in an act or a spell. It can be extinguished and replenished. It's not endless. Magical acts have ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How to format neural actions in a story I'm not aware of any particular consensus, so I think you should pick what works for you. I like the idea that you can nudge, push, or slam an option and each one means something different (even though the electronic action is the same). If the personality performing the action has sentience and inte... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How Much Dialogue Is Too Much Dialogue You're probably too close to the scene to tell. My suggestions: 1) Write the scene with whatever dialogue you think is necessary. Put it in a drawer and don't look at it for at least a month. Then pick it up and read it cold. Make notes of where you can't tell who's speaking. 2) Hand the scene to o... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Wording of comparing X vs Y and X vs Z but not X vs Y vs Z The clarifier you want is "respectively." It's fine in running copy, or even as a caption, but clunks as a header. > Comparison of egocentric camera against static camera and dense sensor placement, respectively For a headline, you might try emphasizing the idea that there are two comparisons with ... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: In present-tense narrative, does "I spend the NEXT few hours..." make sense? The only issue I have with it is that it sounds bookish — it's a narrative device. So if your character is telling this story to the reader, even if it's in the present, you'd be okay. You can particularly get away with more when it's a first-person present-tense POV, because the narration is "s... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Having a character quote an entire stanza of a poem Format it the same way, with blockquote indents, and if you can add a little dialogue before and after, you don't have to worry about weird quote mark placement. Bilbo stood and cleared his throat. "I have a new poem for you all," he announced. "It goes thus: All that i... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: seeking a humorous example of long winded paragraph one sentence long Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Autumn of the Patriarch. I distinctly remember that when we were assigned it as summer reading between 11th and 12th grade, I got to page 40 and counted six periods — that is, six sentences covered 40 pages. I threw the book across the room and told the teacher I refused to r... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How add my alphabet to new book? Write your book. Design your alphabet. Include the page in the front or end matter of your book. Publish. (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How does one indicate uncertainty in a quote? Yes, that's exactly the way I'd indicate that you as the writer/transcriber are uncertain if the word you're indicating is correct. As long as you're making it clear that you're quoting something, as a reader I would be very clear on what that mark meant. (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Writing a trail guide for mountain bike trails - advice on the process They are two different programs for two different tasks. Scrivener is for writing your text. InDesign is for laying out the completed text after it's written and edited. I have written fiction in InDesign, but I'm also a production artist and I spend so much time in InDesign that I'm very comfortab... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How do you properly add paragraphs into a research paper? If it's something that big I would blockquote it (as you've done here for your post) and indent it, and then leave off quotes. It's not dialogue, which has specific practices for multiple paragraphs in a row, and I'd be worried that my reader would forget that I'm quoting someone. (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Show more not tell implementation in writing? If the moments of that events are jumbled and chaotic, then write it down that way. > crashing sounds oh my god what just is that smoke? people running my heartrate starts to spike the ground is thrumming my legs are jelly I need to get out of here push you idiot get out of my way that is smoke what... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Can anyone provide any recent examples of characters which first appeared in a short story, eventually becoming major TV or Film properties? "Brokeback Mountain" is a short story from Annie Proulx which became a major film. Sherlock Holmes appeared in 56 short stories, and has reportedly been played on TV more than any other single character. Stephen King's book Different Seasons has four novellas, three of which became movies: "Rita Ha... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Using colons and semi-colons in dialogue Colons are fine because they represent a stop, the same as an m-dash. I would hesitate to use a semi-colon in dialogue because to me it's a bookish piece of punctuation. It gives the reader a visual guide that two indepdendent clauses are connected. (I would never, however, use a comma splice instead... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How To Write An Unreliable Narrator? The readers only know what you tell them. If you want the reader to realize your narrator isn't telling the truth, the truth must get to the reader around your narrator. - Your narrator can be caught in an outright lie by another character, and has to either admit to it or weasel out of it. - An eve... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How do you know if a book is ready? As others have noted, at absolute minimum you must have someone look over your work for technical mistakes (spelling, grammar, sentence structure, vocabulary). You must do this even if you self-publish. No one is going to read a book so badly structured that it's incomprehensible. I think it is also... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How to write a character's progression Once you've explained the process, you don't need to walk through the process again. You can have a few scenes which are set in whatever the setting is where the skill is practiced (computer lab, forge, bottom of a lake) and summarize with something like "Antonio realized it had only taken him 10 min... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Should I use "could be" or "could have been" in past-tense narration? "Could" in the first one is just the past tense of "can," as you correctly note. In the second example, you are referring to a possibility in the "farther back" past. "Could Tom's mother have been right?" means that you have the present when the story is taking place (even though it's in the past te... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Database for Characters? You could try a relational database (like FileMaker, although that's not free), a mind map (I've never used one, so I don't know what features they have), or some kind of wiki. I use Scrivener with a lot of cross-linking and plain ol' Excel. (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: What is the "inner consistency of reality" that Tolkein refers to in his essay On Faerie Stories? Essentially it means that they obey their own internal rules and logic. If it's established that dwarves live 200 years, there can't be one who is arbitrarily 500 years old. There has to be an explanation: he carried the One Ring, Aulë gave him extra years, etc. A mage can't just endlessly cast spell... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: In what situation do you put a full-stop after an ellipsis? Please note I am describing American English punctuation convention, where the quotes go outside the final punctuation mark. I am aware that British English punctuation is handlded differently. The ellipsis is used to indicate a trailing pause. If it's in the middle of a sentence, and you're contin... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: How to work on a new software feature that affects different topics How do your users read and use the manual? If they use it as a textbook , where 95% of the readers start at the beginning and progress through to the end in linear fashion, then put all the new information into one chapter at the end. If they use it as a reference book , so chapters are read out o... (more) |
— | about 9 years ago |
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A: Why does this software suggest capitalizing the word 'dragon'? You would only capitalize dragon in this instance if it meant something other than "generic name for fire-breathing reptile of fantasy." For example, in Gregory Maguire's alternate history of Oz (the book series which starts with Wicked), animals which can't talk and aren't sentient are written in l... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Punctuation before / after em dash and speech mark Examples 1 and 3 are fine. You can have a sharp break at the end of a line of dialogue. I'd slightly change 2. > 'Come — ' He beckoned me closer with a finger. I wouldn't use a comma after an M-dash, because the M-dash already indicates a pause, so the double pause doesn't quite work. This questio... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Current best program for self-publishing? You need a desktop layout program, such as Adobe InDesign or Quark XPress. Don't use Word; it's a word processing program and not meant for layout. You could possibly use LaTex, but I don't know much about it. (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: How can I surprise my readers with a surprise betrayal? Give the victim a reason to betray the good guys. Make the victim a rounded character. Give him or her motivation, backstory, and personality. The reader may not see all the backstory you've created, but you as the author should know what it is, and write the person accordingly. Maybe the victim is... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Character name and its capitalisation In David and Leigh Eddings's Malloreon series, one of the characters, a ruler, styles himself ’Zakath , with the apostrophe. The characters under his rule use the apostrophe; those who oppose him don't, if I recall correctly. So those who do and don't use it say as much about the character as the apo... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Creating the goal of a scene when the main character is passive? The motivation doesn't have to be massive or book-spanning. As Cole correctly notes, it could simply be "getting to the door." Or "not getting an elbow in the eye." Or "not choking from the smoke" (or whatever the problem is that's causing the evacuation). Or conversely, maybe your character's goal ... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: How do you write boy & girl protagonists without turning them into a love story? Off the top of my head, CJ Cherryh's Morgaine saga (female mage, male assistant), three or four books, no romance. (removing this per @what's comment below) ETA so wow, it turned out to be a lot harder than I thought it was to find examples. Almost every story I can think of at the moment has either... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Constructed Language - how to spell words that will be mispronounced in English If it means that much to you, have a pronounciation guide up front — not an appendix, but before the main text. And then just sigh and accept that half your readers aren't going to get it right anyway. (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Map of my fantasy world - how do realms, kingdoms, cities, towns and villages fit into it? In Tolkien-influenced high fantasy, realm is generally used in place of country, and means the same thing. A kingdom is a country which is specifically ruled by a monarchy. An empire can be one country or a collection of countries and territories, ruled by an emperor/empress. You can have one king ... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Writing from a hive mind POV (This might get good answers on WorldBuilding SE also.) I think you have to decide, from a storytelling viewpoint, how these people communicate. Does each individual have his/her own thoughts but others pop in and out like everyone is always in the same room and thinking out loud? Do you only hear t... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Position of Footnote on Page Cheat and edit your text. Or keep combing backwards through your layout, either pushing a few lines forward or bringing a few lines back, until your footnote and the referent are on the same page. (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: How to format common words that are made "special"? Capitalizing it is good, but coming up with another name for it is better. Churchill famously called it the Black Dog. Yours could be the Black Oil, or Dark Oil, or Devil's Touch, et cetera. (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: I am looking to self publish a book but I don't need everything the sites offer If you have a printer who is handling print-on-demand, what would you need an additional service for? Lay out the book yourself, or hire a designer to do it, and send the end files to your POD printer. To declare yourself the publisher you just put it in your colophon information: > Published by ... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Scene order: is this order of scenes confusing? Put time-stamps at the beginning of each chapter, or time switch, and you should be okay. I'm not sure how you would indicate "present day" if your book starts "in the future," but that's up to you. (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Based on where I put a comma in a long sentence, can it confuse the readers from the way its supposed to be read? 1) Break your habit of long sentences. They are mentally exhausting. Try reading your sentences out loud and see how often you have to stop to take a breath, or if you can remember the beginning of the sentence by the end. 2) You have a comma splice in your example. > He blinked unconsciously, lean... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: Do I have to write my book in the main character's POV? Yes, the narrator can be a secondary character. The beautiful Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller is about the warrior Achilles and his life, but told by his lover Patroclus. The Great Gatsby is told by Nick Carraway, almost a tertiary character in the love story between Gatsby and Daisy. All the ... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |
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A: How to Develop a Theme Before Writing a Novel Your theme is the general statement you're making, but you can only make the statement via the plot. The plot should be developed via the organic actions of the characters. Therefore, decide on your theme, figure out a rough plot which will express this theme, and staff the plot with characters who ... (more) |
— | over 9 years ago |